by Bill Randles, 9/11/03
September 11, 2002
You have come to my attention through your
contribution to the book From the Ashes: A Spiritual Response to the
Attack on America. Since that
time I have had the opportunity to read some of your other works, such as
Conversations with God, and Honest to God, in which you make the
following assertion about the spiritual demands of the day in which we live:
But this is a new time and a new day and we need a new way. I’ve been saying that part of what we need is a new God. This is shaking people up a little bit.1
In From the Ashes you have also asserted that we ministers should be preaching a “new gospel”. In fact you challenged every minister, priest, rabbi and cleric in the land to preach this new message:
We must change ourselves. We must change beliefs upon which our behaviors are based. We must create a different reality, build a new society. . . . We must do so with new spiritual truths. We must preach a new gospel, its healing message summarized in two sentences:
Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.2
This 15 minute message, delivered from every lectern and pulpit, from every rostrum and platform could change everything overnight. I challenge every priest, every minister, every rabbi and religious cleric to preach this.
I have also found that you, Marianne Williamson, and your other friends at your Global Renaissance Alliance are aspiring to bring this “new gospel” into politics. I am writing you to let you know why I reject your “new gospel,” and why I would hope that other Christian ministers would do likewise. It should be obvious to your readers that your “God” is not the Holy, Infinite, personal God of the Bible. For example you quote your “God” as saying:
There are no such things as the Ten Commandments.3
You are already a God. You simply do not know it.4
Mr. Walsch, have you ever read the story of the serpent (Satan) lying to Adam and Eve in the garden? There is nothing at all “new” about your gospel! Your God’s gospel is the same as that of the serpent’s! “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” (Genesis 3:5) is the primal lie that has damned the human race!! It is also obvious that much of your inspiration comes from A Course in Miracles, which your “God” claims to have inspired. The same spirit which would deify man, as a consequence, is inimically hostile to the cross of Jesus Christ. As the “Jesus” of A Course in Miracles asserts:
The journey to the cross should be the last “useless journey.” 5
And also:
Do not make the pathetic error of “clinging to the old rugged cross.” 6
Finally, this false gospel promoted by this so-called Course in Miracles:
The atonement is the final lesson he [man] need learn, for it teaches him that, never having sinned, he has no need of salvation.7
It is no wonder that in your “God’s” scheme of things Hitler is in heaven! 8 Hitler, of course never sinned, as your “God” doesn’t believe in sin. Hitler made “mistakes.”
The mistakes Hitler made did no harm or damage to those whose deaths he caused. Those souls were released from their earthly bondage, like butterflies emerging from a cocoon.9
Incredibly you go on to assert that, “Hitler didn’t hurt anyone.”!! 10
I may be the first minister to alert you to this. (I hope not). But with all due respect, Mr. Walsch, you are bringing a false gospel, more in keeping with what we are warned of in the New Testament as being of the “spirit of anti-christ” than of God. I am sure you are very well intentioned but sincerity is not substitute for discernment. “Try the spirits whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1). You, the “new gospel” promoters of A Course in Miracles, your Global Renaissance Alliance, and every other practitioner of any spirituality which deifies man, are not of God but of the spirit of anti-Christ .
The Word of the Lord came again unto me, saying, Son of man say unto the prince of Tyrus, thus saith the Lord God; because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God. (Ezekiel 28-1-2).
Mr. Walsch, the Bible warns us that “false christs and false prophets” would arise, bringing deceptive signs and wonders to verify their false teachings. All of this would come in the midst of a time marked by “wars and rumours of wars”. (Matthew 24:6, 24:24) You have boldly challenged me and other Christian ministers to accept your “new gospel.” Do you not realize that your deification of man, and validation of all religions is the “broad way” Jesus warned of that ends in death and destruction for all who are on it (Matthew 7:13-15)? Rather than deny my calling by proclaiming your “new gospel,” I will do what I can to warn people to beware of you, Marianne Williamson, and your Global Renaissance Alliance.
Salvation does not come by discovering our
supposed godhood, (what kind of god has to be reminded that he is god?).
Salvation comes the opposite way, by letting go of false claims to be as
gods, and taking our place again as created beings under God. Man can never
become God, but God has become a man, in the person of Jesus, that he might
take our place in judgment for our sins. I am firmly convinced that there is
coming a huge religious test for the whole world, and that with eternal
consequences. It is a choice between two gospels: either your “new gospel”
of human deification, called "the mystery of iniquity" in 2 Thessalonians 2,
or the true Gospel, the “mystery of godliness” (1 Tim. 3:16), that the true
God became a man to save us from our sin. I ask you to consider what I am
saying here. There can be no true "new gospel", only a counterfeit one.
There can be no new “Christ”, only an anti-christ.
Sincerely,
Pastor Bill Randles
cc: Billy Graham; T.D. Jakes; Charles Colson; Max Lucado; Bill Hybels; Jerry Jenkins; Bruce Wilkinson
P.S. I am sending carbon copies of this letter to the Christian leaders who allowed their articles to be published along with yours. I will be asking them also to openly renounce your “new gospel” challenge. Chuck Colson, Billy Graham, T.D. Jakes and others have unfortunately lent credibility to your “new gospel” which is in fact a denial of Jesus Christ. Hopefully these Christian leaders will emphatically distance themselves from endorsing, or appearing to endorse, your “new gospel.”
Endnotes:
1 Neale Donald Walsch, Honest to God: A Change of Heart That Can Change the World, (Stanley, VA. Sparrowhawk Publications 2002) p. 202
2 Beliefnet, Inc. From the Ashes: A Spiritual Response to the Attack on America, (Emmaus, PA: Rodale Pub., 2001)
3 Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God: an uncommon dialogue, Book 1, (NY; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1996), p. 95
4 Neale Donald Walsh, Conversations with God: an uncommon dialogue, Book 3 (Charlottesville, VA; Hampton Roads Pub. Co., Inc. 1996), p. 202
5 Foundaton for Inner Peace, A Course in Miracles, Text, (Glen Ellen, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1992), p. 52
6 Ibid
7 A Course in Miracles, Text. P. 237
8 Conversations with God: an uncommon dialogue, Book 1, p 61
9 Ibid, Book 2, p. 42
10 Ibid, p. 56